‘From a farm field to this’: Amazon ‘fulfillment center’ opens in Huntley

Hundreds of packages zip down a conveyor belt that winds through a 600,000-square-foot Amazon facility in Huntley, carrying items ranging from pretzels to diapers to shower curtains.

Officials of the new Amazon Fulfillment Center that opened in February aim to employ about 3,000 people and get products to customers as fast as possible.

The center at 11500 Freeman Road, near Route 47 and Interstate 90, has been hiring about 200 employees a week and expects to reach its goal of about 3,000 employees by May, Amazon Operations Manager Brandon Tole said during a recent tour of the facility.

This is Huntley’s second Amazon facility. A separate fulfillment center opened in 2022. That warehouse, next door at 11400 Venture Court, specializes in heavy and bulky inventory such as furniture and appliances.

Amazon did not receive any tax breaks from the village and none were requested, Huntley Village Manager Dave Johnson said.

“The Amazon footprint in our community has grown significantly,” Johnson said.

The only other facility of this type in Illinois is in Joliet, Tole said.

The Joliet warehouse has seen its share of controversy, with worker walkouts for better wages and working conditions. Complaints of too-hot working conditions at the loading docks and racially based threats have been reported at that location.

Amazon will affect Huntley not just economically, but also through the community. The trillion-dollar company donated $15,000 to the Huntley Park District, which includes a three-year sponsorship of a field in Tomaso Sports Park, said Matt Szytz, the park district’s marketing and communications director.

The money also will help fund the Go Huntley program that encourages residents to walk at least 30 minutes a day. “It gets the wheels turning to explore some bigger ideas,” Szytz said.

Amazon also is looking to create partnerships with the elementary and high school districts in Huntley, Amazon Head of Community Affairs Sarah Glavin said.

The company is looking to bring free coursework on careers that “haven’t been invented, yet” in areas such as drone delivery and low-orbit satellites.

Glavin said the company wants its presence in town to be a catalyst. “It cracks that door open and makes those jobs feel more tangible,” he said.

The center aims to cut down shipping times that could help get certain products to customers in the area within hours rather than days, Tole said.

The facility works by receiving products directly from suppliers, then sorting them out to small warehouses throughout the county. Getting more of these fulfillment centers is “strategically important” for Amazon, and the company already has opened three of this kind in the country this year alone, Tole said.

Tole, who served in the U.S. Army for 10 years and in the Marine Corps Reserves for eight years, is a manager under Amazon’s Pathways program that targets candidates pursuing a master’s degree or with a military background for leadership positions.

Federal court records show that someone with the same name as Tole is among the current and former Amazon employees who are listed as plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit against Amazon, claiming the company’s ratings process “discriminates against military service members by limiting promotion and compensation increases.”

Tole previously worked at the Joliet warehouse starting in 2017, according to court documents. When he notified Amazon of his military leave in January 2019, with a May 2019 departure, the company gave him an “overall value” rating of “least effective” in April 2019, an attorney representing Tole, Gene Stonebarger, said in court documents.

Amazon’s “overall value” rating is an internal employee performance scale, with “least effective” at the bottom of the four-tier rating system, according to court documents.

Upon Tole’s return to his job after his military leave, Amazon did not consider Tole’s work prior to his military leave for his “overall value” status, Stonebarger said in court documents. “He had his tenure reset upon his return and ‘was told that everything that I’d done prior to leaving for military deployment no longer counts toward promotion,’” Stonebarger wrote in the court filing.

Amazon Regional Public Relations Manager Caitlin Tully said she couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation. Neither Tole nor his attorney could be reached for comment about the lawsuit following the tour of the Huntley facility.

Despite the lawsuit, during the tour Tole touted the new Amazon facility at a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony showcasing the state-of-the-art machinery and robots that maximize efficiency and safety. The facility, the size of about 11 football fields, can process about 1,500 items an hour and about 6 million items a week, he said.

“Once we get settled in, we’ll be able to get shipments in and out of the building within seven minutes,” he said. Tole said he hopes his team will be able to process and sort up to 8 million items per week. “Honestly, we probably have the capacity and the right management team to start breaking some records at this site.”

Huntley Village President Timothy Hoeft said Amazon has been “a great community partner,” and he expects the warehouse to have a positive impact on the surrounding area with increased business to nearby shops and restaurants.

“It’s an exciting day for Huntley to take it from a farm field to this,” he said.